31 January, 2016

On December
23, 1913, the then US President Woodrow Wilson puts the final
signature for the so-called Federal Reserve Act. Big private banks
take control of the US money supply. In 1971, Richard Nixon ended the
direct convertibility of the US dollar to gold, and as dollar became
the global reserve currency, the absolute dominance of the banksters
became definite.

Since then,
the progress of the technology permitted the banking elite to
strengthen its power through virtual circulation of huge amounts of
capital at zero time. The paper/digital money is used now as a tool
for dirty wars, buying governments, directing more and more money and
power to the top. Just remember the cash that had been transferred by
US army helicopters to Iraq. Or, observe how Greece is destroyed
through the evil mechanism: for five years now, the economy has been
destroyed by the IMF mafia policies, but the debt has risen
enormously. The loans are coming to the country - supposedly for the
payment of previous debt - and return to the creditors at the same
time, while loading Greece with more debt. The money is circulated
virtually, but the impact on people's lives is real. Salaries and
pensions being reduced continuously, unemployment remains enormously
high, social state is systematically destroyed.

Now that the
experiment in Greece is about to end, the desirable conditions nearly
achieved, and the "investors"
of this evil money mechanism, are coming to take what has real value:
state businesses, properties, land, mineral deposits, whatever they
can. All for pennies, of course. Because they know very well that
paper and digital numbers on a computer screen have no real value.

Bernie
Sanders was the one who exposed the illegal mechanism of the Fed when the last major crisis
exploded: “The Fed has thus far reported, without even
disclosing specifics of its lending from its discount window, which
it continues to draw a dark curtain around, that it supplied, in
total, more than $9 trillion to Wall Street firms, commercial banks,
foreign banks, corporations and some highly questionable off balance
sheet entities. (Much smaller amounts were outstanding at any one
time.)”

Let's face
it: the state and state's institutions have become a decorating
element of what we call "Democracy". Banksters and
corporate lobbyists have the absolute power and they want even more.
They promote further deregulation through TTIP-type agreements to
destroy any chance for the states to regain real power to control
them.

Bernie says
he'll break up the big banks, but that's not enough. Because we
should always have in mind that the free market is a fairy tale. This
is a closed powerful system with a few leading currencies that shape
the Western monetary monopoly, all connected with the most powerful
of all at the top. And the banksters control the "machine"
in order to print dollars, physically or digitally, as many as they
want, whenever they want. And, direct them wherever they want.

In case he
get elected, Bernie could make a checkmate move to beat the
banksters. And that is, nationalize the Fed. Which means that the
money control would pass to the state. Then, Bernie could easily do
what he promised to the American people: free healthcare and
education for all. Public investments all over America that could
create millions of new jobs with decent salaries and could also drive
up the salaries in the private sector. Money would be directed to the
bottom 99% instead of the top 1%.

The
international financial mafia who controls the entire planet through
the Western monetary monopoly and the dollar "printing"
machine located in the US, has already a serious reason to worry: the
emergence of a rival independent monetary system by the BRICS and the
Sino-Russian alliance.

Recent attempts by the mafia to put the Chinese currency
under control and break the alliance, indicate that the mafia indeed
is sensing a threat concerning its dominance. And that's because the
rival currency system may be proved much more reliable than the
bubble economy of the dominant model.

Banksters
could suffer a double hit. One from inside through the
nationalization of the Fed, and one from outside with the form of a
rival monetary system that could offer an alternative to
debt-enslaved colonies like Greece. So, through only one key move,
Bernie could make banksters lose their sleep ...

The
UN-sponsored Syrian peace talks, which began on Friday in Geneva,
will be boycotted by the main Syrian opposition group which has
insisted that Russia stop bombing its positions while negotiations
are conducted. To appreciate how ridiculous these demands are, one
would have to imagine a similar scenario taking place in the United
States. Let’s say, for example, that Ammon Bundy, the crackpot
leader of the armed militia that seized the federal wildlife refuge
in eastern Oregon, demanded that the FBI and all other federal agents
vamoose while the UN convened negotiations between his
representatives and the Obama administration for the establishment of
a transitional government that would remove Obama from power after 18
months while rewriting the constitution so it better reflected the
far-right political and religious convictions of Bundy and his gaggle
of ne’er-do-well followers.

Does that
seem like a reasonable proposition to you?

This is the
context in which the current “talks” are being held. Is it any
wonder why Moscow doesn’t take this charade seriously? It’s a
joke.

In what
other country are armed militias allowed to occupy cities, kill
civilians, destroy critical infrastructure, create total mayhem and
threaten to overthrow the elected government?

None. And
yet, the Obama team thinks this is a perfectly acceptable way for
citizens and even non citizens (most of the ‘rebels’ are foreign
nationals or jihadis) to act, provided their political objectives
coincide with those of Washington. Which they do. From the very
beginning, Washington’s sole aim has been to topple Syrian
President Bashar al Assad so the oil fields and pipeline corridors
could be secured by the western oil giants and protected by new US
military bases sprinkled across the country. This has been the basic
gameplan since Day 1, and this is why Obama and Co are so eager to
slow the Russian-led offensive by any means possible even if it means
engaging in meaningless negotiations that have no other purpose than
to implement a ceasefire so these same US-backed terrorists can
regroup and fight at some future date when they are better prepared.

Russian
President Vladimir Putin sees through this ruse but–all the
same–he’s dispatched diplomats to Geneva to play along and
go-through-the-motions. But will he cave in and agree to a ceasefire
so Obama’s “rebels” can live to fight another day? Don’t bet
on it.

What
Americans are not reading in the western media is that, after months
of slow but steady progress, the Russian-led coalition (Syrian Arab
Army, Iranian Quds Forces, and Hezbollah) has broken through the
sluicegate and is advancing on all fronts while enemy positions are
crumbling. Key cities and towns in Latakia province along the Turkish
border that used to be jihadi strongholds have buckled under Russia’s
relentless bombing raids and been liberated by the Syrian Army.
Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city to the north, has been surrounded by
loyalist forces that have cut off supplylines to Turkey leaving
fighters from Salafi groups like Ahrar al Sham, Jabhat al Nusra,
Jaish al Islam, ISIS and the other al Qaida-linked groups to either
surrender or hunker down while they await the final desperate
confrontation. The momentum has shifted in favor of Assad’s forces
which now clearly have the upper hand. What the western media
characterizes as a “quagmire” has all the makings of a stunning
victory for the Russian-led coalition that is gradually
reestablishing security across Syria while sending the invaders
running for cover. This is from Reuters:

“Three
months into his military intervention in Syria, Russian President
Vladimir Putin has achieved his central goal of stabilizing the
Assad government and, with the costs relatively low, could sustain
military operations at this level for years, U.S. officials and
military analysts say.

That
assessment comes despite public assertions by President Barack
Obama and top aides that Putin has embarked on an ill-conceived
mission in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that it
will struggle to afford and that will likely fail…

since
its campaign began on Sept. 30, Russia has suffered minimal
casualties and, despite domestic fiscal woes, is handily covering
the operation’s cost, which analysts estimate at $1-2 billion a
year. The war is being funded from Russia’s regular annual
defense budget of about $54 billion, a U.S. intelligence official
said…

QUAGMIRE?

“An
attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the
population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it
won’t work,” (President) Obama said on Oct. 2. On Dec. 1, he
raised the prospect of Russia becoming “bogged down in an
inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict.”

The
senior administration official denied any contradiction between
Obama’s statements and private assessments that Russia’s
campaign has been relatively effective so far.

“I
think the president’s point has been…it’s not going to
succeed in the long run,” the official said. The Russians “have
become bound up in a civil war in a way that’s going to be
extremely difficult to extricate themselves from.”….

Vasily
Kashin, a Moscow-based analyst, said the war is not financially
stressing Russia.

“All
the available data shows us that the current level of military
effort is completely insignificant for the Russian economy and
Russian budget,” said Kashin, of the Center for Analyses of
Strategies and Technologies. “It can be carried on at the same
level year after year after year,” he said.”

Americans
are so conditioned to believe that every military intervention ends
in a quagmire that they are surprised when the outcome is different.
That’s understandable given the fact that the so called “best
military on earth” has been unable to defeat a ragtag collection of
goat-herding fundamentalists for more than 15 years. (Afghanistan) No
wonder Americans expect failure. The fact is, however, that Putin has
no intention of getting “bogged down” in Syria for a decade or
two.. What he plans to do is to defeat the enemy and move on. Recent
reports from the frontlines suggest that that is precisely what he is
doing. This is from a post at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

“The Fall of Salma”

Things had started to move early
last week, when the SAA (Syrian Arab Army), NDF (National Defense
Force) and local militias moved into Salma, the rebel stronghold
that was key to defensive positions South of the M4 highway
linking Latakia to Idlib. After weeks of preparations and
softening up defences, R+6 finally moved in and there was not much
the various rebel groups could have done at that point to stop or
reverse this trend…

… Once the strategic breaking
point is reached though, the side having gained the upper hand
usually pushes through, which results in the opponent’s posture
crumbling under the pressure. This is what happened with Salma, a
former mountain resort North-East of Latakia… When R+6 went for
their final assault, Salma had already become untenable. Its loss
meant that the whole defensive line South of the M4 highway was
compromised and both SAA advances and “tactical” retreat by
the rebels made for a very quick correction of the frontline in
the area…

The inroads made by the SAA…
again proved decisive against a rebel frontline that had already
been destabilized by the loss of Salma and the prospect of being
cut off from their LOCs with Jisr al-Shughur.” (Rebel Defences
Crumbling In Latakia Province, Sic Semper Tyrannis)

Get the
picture? The jihadi misfits are getting the holy hell beat out of
them by a superior army that is recapturing critical cities and
strategic territory along the Turkish border and across the southern
and eastern parts of the country. As a result, Assad will not be
removed from office nor will the country become a “Salafi-jihadi
principality” governed by Islamic freaks who rule through terror.

That’s not
to say that there aren’t plenty of potential pitfalls ahead. There
are, in fact there’s a situation developing right now that could
explode into a regional conflict involving Turkey, NATO, the US and
Russia. You see, Russia plans to use its Kurdish allies in the YPG to
seize a stretch of land along the Syrian side of the Turkish border
to reestablish Syria’s territorial sovereignty and to stop the flow
of terrorists from Turkey into Syria. Turkish President Erdogan has
promised that if the YPG pursues that course, Turkey will invade, in
which case, Putin will come to the defense of the Kurds. There’s no
telling how this powderkeg situation will play out, but there’s no
doubt that the next few weeks are going to be extremely tense as the
main players rattle sabers and jockey for position while edging
closer to a full-blown conflagration. Will cooler heads prevail?

I can’t
answer that, but I can tell you that Washington has already backed
off its “Assad must go” campaign and moved on to Plan B, which is
seizing territory and establishing bases in Northeastern Syria that
the US plans to occupy for as long as they can. Check it out from
South Front website:

“As SouthFront: Analysis and
Intelligence predicted month ago the NATO allies are urgently
trying to implement a new plan to hold control at least of the
northern oil corridor from Iraq and try to take advantage of this
opportunity to involve Russia in a long expensive war. This plan
includes an occupation of the crucial infrastructure including
oilfields by the NATO contingent and establishing of
anti-government, meaning anti-Russian and anti-Iranian, forces in
parts of divided Syria.

Implementing of this plan could
easily lead to a global war launched by military escalation over
the Syrian crisis. The stakes of the global geopolitical standoff
have been raised again.” (Escalation in Syria, South Front)

So even
though Washington has scrapped its plan to topple Assad
(temporarily), it has deepened its commitment to creating Sunnistan,
a new state comprised of eastern Syria and western Iraq controlled by
US-clients who will allow western oil giants to connect the pipeline
grid from Qatar to Turkey in order to replace Russia as the EU’s
primary supplier of natural gas. It’s all part of the imperial
strategy to “pivot” to Asia by controlling vital resources and
making sure they remain denominated in US dollars. It’s an
ambitious plan for global rule that is now being openly challenged by
Russia, the emerging power that threatens to derail the lethal US
juggernaut and put an end to the malign unipolar world order.

Swedish
police have made at least four arrests after a mob stormed the
country's capital Stockholm in a spree of anti-refugee violence. As
many as 100 masked people marched through the city handing out fliers
threatening to target “North African street children” and give
them the “punishment they deserve,” according to local tabloid
Aftonbladet.

The fascist
group Swedish Resistance Movement has claimed responsibility for the
demonstration. According to RT, the group has issued a statement
claiming it “cleaned up criminal immigrants from North Africa” in
central Stockholm.

The mob has
been accused of attacking anyone on the street that didn't appear
white. According to The Local, witnesses said at least three people
were assaulted by the mob.

30 January, 2016

In 2015 the
European Central Bank tightened its ethics rules in the wake of a
major scandal over privileged information it gave to select
financiers. In the future there will be more restrictions on the way
the leadership associates with representatives of financial
corporations. But the discoveries from the scandal seems to have no
bearing on the way the ECB's top brass deals with the quasi-lobby
Group of Thirty.

In May 2015,
a member of the powerful Governing Council of the European Central
Bank (ECB) gave confidential information about quantitative easing to
a meeting of bankers and academics, with the former seemingly
responding swiftly, securing an advantage over competitors. Only a
few months later, the ECB adopted new rules on how and when to
associate with financial lobbyists and representatives of financial
corporations.

It seems a
new awareness was borne out of the scandal. Yet, at the same time the
ECB involvement with the powerful financial interest group G30 (Group
of Thirty) has intensified, and there is no sign this has caused
controversy inside the bank. In a letter to Corporate Europe
Observatory, the ECB explained that its internal bodies set up to
overlook the ethical rules have not even considered the closeness of
the central bank's relationship with the G30.

At least 33
people drowned and 75 others were rescued after a boat carrying
migrants to Greece sank off Turkey's western coast, a local mayor and
Turkish news agency Dogan reported on Saturday.

The Turkish
coast guard was continuing search and rescue efforts where the boat
sank off the coast of Ayvacik, a town across from the Greek island of
Lesvos. It was not immediately clear how many migrants had been on
board.

At least
five of those who died were children, the Dogan news agency said, and
rescued migrants were hospitalized with hypothermia symptoms. It said
the migrants were of Syrian, Afghan and Myanmar origin.

The world is
undergoing a populist revival. From the revolt against austerity led
by the Syriza Party in Greece and the Podemos Party in Spain, to
Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise victory as Labour leader in the UK, to
Donald Trump’s ascendancy in the Republican polls, to Bernie
Sanders’ surprisingly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton –
contenders with their fingers on the popular pulse are surging ahead
of their establishment rivals.

Today’s
populist revolt mimics an earlier one that reached its peak in the US
in the 1890s. Then it was all about challenging Wall Street,
reclaiming the government’s power to create money, curing rampant
deflation with US Notes (Greenbacks) or silver coins (then considered
the money of the people), nationalizing the banks, and establishing a
central bank that actually responded to the will of the people.

Over a
century later, Occupy Wall Street revived the populist challenge,
armed this time with the Internet and mass media to spread the word.
The Occupy movement shined a spotlight on the corrupt culture of
greed unleashed by deregulating Wall Street, widening the yawning gap
between the 1% and the 99% and destroying jobs, households and the
economy.

Donald
Trump’s populist campaign has not focused much on Wall Street; but
Bernie Sanders’ has, in spades. Sanders has picked up the baton
where Occupy left off, and the disenfranchised Millennials who
composed that movement have flocked behind him.

The
Failure of Regulation

Sanders’
focus on Wall Street has forced his opponent Hillary Clinton to
respond to the challenge. Clinton maintains that Sanders’ proposals
sound good but “will never make it in real life.” Her solution is
largely to preserve the status quo while imposing more bank
regulation.

That
approach, however, was already tried with the Dodd-Frank Act, which
has not solved the problem although it is currently the longest and
most complicated bill ever passed by the US legislature. Dodd-Frank
purported to eliminate bailouts, but it did this by replacing them
with “bail-ins” – confiscating the funds of bank creditors,
including depositors, to keep too-big-to-fail banks afloat. The costs
were merely shifted from the people-as-taxpayers to the
people-as-creditors.

Worse, the
massive tangle of new regulations has hamstrung the smaller community
banks that make the majority of loans to small and medium sized
businesses, which in turn create most of the jobs. More regulation
would simply force more community banks to sell out to their larger
competitors, making the too-bigs even bigger.

In any case,
regulatory tweaking has proved to be an inadequate response. Banks
backed by an army of lobbyists simply get the laws changed, so that
what was formerly criminal behavior becomes legal. (See, e.g.,
CitiGroup’s redrafting of the “push out” rule in December 2015
that completely vitiated the legislative intent.)

What Sanders
is proposing, by contrast, is a real financial revolution, a
fundamental change in the system itself. His proposals include
eliminating Too Big to Fail by breaking up the biggest banks;
protecting consumer deposits by reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act
(separating investment from depository banking); reviving postal
banks as safe depository alternatives; and reforming the Federal
Reserve, enlisting it in the service of the people.

Time to
Revive the Original Populist Agenda?

Sanders’
proposals are a good start. But critics counter that breaking up the
biggest banks would be costly, disruptive and destabilizing; and it
would not eliminate Wall Street corruption and mismanagement.

Banks today
have usurped the power to create the national money supply. As the
Bank of England recently acknowledged, banks create money whenever
they make loans. Banks determine who gets the money and on what
terms. Reducing the biggest banks to less than $50 billion in assets
(the Dodd-Frank limit for “too big to fail”) would not make them
more trustworthy stewards of that power and privilege.

How can
banking be made to serve the needs of the people and the economy,
while preserving the more functional aspects of today’s highly
sophisticated global banking system? Perhaps it is time to reconsider
the proposals of the early populists. The direct approach to
“occupying” the banks is to simply step into their shoes and make
them public utilities. Insolvent megabanks can be nationalized – as
they were before 2008. (More on that shortly.)

Making banks
public utilities can happen on a local level as well. States and
cities can establish publicly-owned depository banks on the highly
profitable and efficient model of the Bank of North Dakota. Public
banks can partner with community banks to direct credit where it is
needed locally; and they can reduce the costs of government by
recycling bank profits for public use, eliminating outsized Wall
Street fees and obviating the need for derivatives to mitigate risk.

At the
federal level, not only can postal banks serve as safe depositories
and affordable credit alternatives, but the central bank can provide
a source of interest-free credit for the nation – as was done, for
example, with Canada’s central bank from 1939 to 1974. The U.S.
Treasury could also reclaim the power to issue, not just pocket
change, but a major portion of the money supply – as was done by
the American colonists in the 18th century and by President Abraham
Lincoln in the 19th century.

Nationalization:
Not As Radical As It Sounds

Radical as
it sounds today, nationalizing failed megabanks was actually standard
operating procedure before 2008. Nationalization was one of three
options open to the FDIC when a bank failed. The other two were
closure and liquidation, and merger with a healthy bank. Most
failures were resolved using the merger option, but for very large
banks, nationalization was sometimes considered the best choice for
taxpayers. The leading U.S. example was Continental Illinois, the
seventh-largest bank in the country when it failed in 1984. The FDIC
wiped out existing shareholders, infused capital, took over bad
assets, replaced senior management, and owned the bank for about a
decade, running it as a commercial enterprise.

What was a
truly radical departure from accepted practice was the unprecedented
wave of government bailouts after the 2008 banking crisis. The
taxpayers bore the losses, while culpable bank management not only
escaped civil and criminal penalties but made off with record
bonuses.

In a July
2012 article in The New York Times titled “Wall Street Is Too Big
to Regulate,” Gar Alperovitz noted that the five biggest
banks—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and
Goldman Sachs—then had combined assets amounting to more than half
the nation’s economy. He wrote:

With
high-paid lobbyists contesting every proposed regulation, it is
increasingly clear that big banks can never be effectively controlled
as private businesses. If an enterprise (or five of them) is so
large and so concentrated that competition and regulation are
impossible, the most market-friendly step is to nationalize its
functions. . . .

Nationalization isn’t as difficult as it sounds. We tend to forget
that we did, in fact, nationalize General Motors in 2009; the
government still owns a controlling share of its stock. We also
essentially nationalized the American International Group, one of the
largest insurance companies in the world, and the government still
owns roughly 60 percent of its stock.

A
more market-friendly term than nationalization is “receivership”
– taking over insolvent banks and cleaning them up. But as Dr.
Michael Hudson observed in a 2009 article, real nationalization does
not mean simply imposing losses on the government and then selling
the asset back to the private sector. He wrote:

Real
nationalization occurs when governments act in the public interest to
take over private property. . . . Nationalizing the banks along these
lines would mean that the government would supply the nation’s
credit needs. The Treasury would become the source of new money,
replacing commercial bank credit. Presumably this credit would be
lent out for economically and socially productive purposes, not
merely to inflate asset prices while loading down households and
business with debt as has occurred under today’s commercial bank
lending policies.

A
Network of Locally-Controlled Public Banks

“Nationalizing”
the banks implies top-down federal control, but this need not be the
result. We could have a system of publicly-owned banks that were
locally controlled, operating independently to serve the needs of
their own communities.

As
noted earlier, banks create the money they lend simply by writing it
into accounts. Money comes into existence as a debit in the
borrower’s account, and it is extinguished when the debt is repaid.
This happens at a grassroots level through local banks, creating and
destroying money organically according to the demands of the
community. Making these banks public institutions would differ from
the current system only in that the banks would have a mandate to
serve the public interest, and the profits would be returned to the
local government for public use.

Although
most of the money supply would continue to be created and destroyed
locally as loans, there would still be a need for the
government-issued currency envisioned by the early populists, to fill
gaps in demand as needed to keep supply and demand in balance. This
could be achieved with a national dividend issued by the federal
Treasury to all citizens, or by “quantitative easing for the
people” as envisioned by Jeremy Corbyn, or by quantitative easing
targeted at infrastructure.

For
decades, private sector banking has been left to its own devices. The
private-only banking model has been thoroughly tested, and it has
proven to be a disastrous failure. We need a banking system that
truly serves the needs of the people, and that objective can best be
achieved with banks that are owned and operated by and for the
people.

Before
announcing for President in the Democratic Primaries, Bernie Sanders
told the people he would not run as an Independent and be like
Nader—invoking the politically-bigoted words “being a spoiler.”
Well, the spoiled corporate Democrats in Congress and their
consultants are mounting a “stop Bernie campaign.” They believe
he’ll “spoil” their election prospects.

Sorry
Bernie, because anybody who challenges the positions of the
corporatist, militaristic, Wall Street-funded Democrats, led by
Hillary Clinton, in the House and Senate—is by their twisted
definition, a “spoiler.” It doesn’t matter how many of Bernie’s
positions are representative of what a majority of the American
people want for their country.

What comes
around goes around. Despite running a clean campaign, funded by small
donors averaging $27, with no scandals in his past and with
consistency throughout his decades of standing up for the working and
unemployed people of this country, Sanders is about to be Hillaried.
Her Capitol Hill cronies have dispatched Congressional teams to Iowa.

The shunning
of Bernie Sanders is underway. Did you see him standing alone during
the crowded State of the Union gathering?

Many of the
large unions, that Bernie has championed for decades, have endorsed
Hillary, known for her job-destroying support for NAFTA and the World
Trade Association and her very late involvement in working toward a
minimum wage increase.

National
Nurses United, one of the few unions endorsing Bernie, is not fooled
by Hillary’s sudden anti-Wall Street rhetoric in Iowa. They view
Hillary Clinton, the Wall Street servant (and speechifier at $5000 a
minute) with disgust.

Candidate
Clinton’s latest preposterous pledge is to “crack down” on the
“greed” of corporations and declare that Wall Street bosses are
opposing her because they realize she will “come right after them.”

Because
Sanders is not prone to self-congratulation, few people know that he
receives the highest Senatorial approval rating and the lowest
disapproval rating from his Vermonters than any Senator receives from
his or her constituents. This peak support for an avowed “democratic
socialist,” comes from a state once known for its rock-ribbed
conservative Republican traditions.

Minority
House Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi has unleashed her supine followers to
start wounding and depreciating Sanders. Pelosi acolyte Adam Schiff
(D. California) tells the media he doubts Sanders’s electability
and he could have “very significant downstream consequences in
House and Senate races.”

Mr. Schiff
somehow ignores that the House and Senate Democratic leadership
repeatedly could not defend the country from the worst Republican
Party in history, whose dozens of anti-human, pro-big business votes
should have toppled many GOP candidates. Instead, Nancy Pelosi has
led the House Democrats to three straight calamitous losses (2010,
2012, 2014) to the Republicans, for whom public cruelties toward the
powerless is a matter of principle.

Pelosi threw
her own poisoned darts at Sanders, debunking his far more
life-saving, efficient, and comprehensive, full Medicare-for-all plan
with free choice of doctor and hospital with the knowingly misleading
comment “We’re not running on any platform of raising taxes.”
Presumably that includes continuing the Democratic Party’s practice
of letting Wall Street, the global companies and the super-wealthy
continue to get away with their profitable tax escapes.

Pelosi
doesn’t expect the Democrats to make gains in the House of
Representatives in 2016. But she has managed to hold on to her post
long enough to help elect Hillary Clinton—no matter what Clinton’s
record as a committed corporatist toady and a disastrous militarist
(e.g., Iraq and the War on Libya) has been over the years.

For Pelosi
it’s bring on the ‘old girls club,’ it’s our turn. The
plutocracy and the oligarchy running this country into the ground
have no worries. The genders of the actors are different, but the
monied interests maintain their corporate state and hand out their
campaign cash—business as usual.

Bernie
Sanders, however, does present a moral risk for the corrupt
Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee, which are
already turning on one of their own leading candidates. His years in
politics so cleanly contrasts with the sordid, scandalized,
cashing-in behavior of the Clintons.

Pick up a
copy of Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash, previewed early in 2015 by
the New York Times. Again and again Schweizer documents the
conflicted interest maneuvering of donors to the Clinton Foundation,
shady deals involving global corporations and dictators, and huge
speaking fees, with the Clinton Foundation and the State department
as inventories to benefit the Clintons. The Clintons embody what is
sleazy and harmful about their political intrigues.

If and when
Bernie Sanders is brought down by the very party he is championing,
the millions of Bernie supporters, especially young voters, will have
to consider breaking off into a new political party that will make
American history. That means dissolving the dictatorial two-party
duopoly and its ruinous, unpatriotic, democracy-destroying corporate
paymasters.

Former
senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the only candidate
for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination who supported the
invasion of Iraq.

That war not
only resulted in 4,500 American soldiers being killed and thousands
more permanently disabled, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
deaths, the destabilization of the region with the rise of the
Islamic State and other extremists, and a dramatic increase in the
federal deficit, resulting in major cutbacks to important social
programs. Moreover, the primary reasons Clinton gave for supporting
President George W. Bush’s request for authorizing that illegal and
unnecessary war have long been proven false.

As a result,
many Democratic voters are questioning — despite her years of
foreign policy experience — whether Clinton has the judgment and
integrity to lead the United States on the world stage. It was just
such concerns that resulted in her losing the 2008 nomination to
then-Senator Barack Obama, an outspoken Iraq War opponent.

This time
around, Clinton supporters have been hoping that enough Democratic
voters — the overwhelming majority of whom opposed the war — will
forget about her strong endorsement of the Bush administration’s
most disastrous foreign policy. Failing that, they’ve come up with
a number of excuses to justify her October 2002 vote for the
authorization of military force.

Here they
are, in no particular order.

“Hillary
Clinton’s vote wasn’t for war, but simply to pressure Saddam
Hussein to allow UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq.”

At the time
of vote, Saddam Hussein had already agreed in principle to a return
of the weapons inspectors. His government was negotiating with the
United Nations Monitoring and Verification Commission on the details,
which were formally institutionalized a few weeks later. (Indeed, it
would have been resolved earlier had the United States not repeatedly
postponed a UN Security Council resolution in the hopes of inserting
language that would have allowed Washington to unilaterally interpret
the level of compliance.)

Furthermore,
if then-Senator Clinton’s desire was simply to push Saddam into
complying with the inspection process, she wouldn’t have voted
against the substitute Levin amendment, which would have also granted
President Bush authority to use force, but only if Iraq defied
subsequent UN demands regarding the inspections process. Instead,
Clinton voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution to give Bush the
authority to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own
choosing.

In fact,
unfettered large-scale weapons inspections had been going on in Iraq
for nearly four months at the time the Bush administration launched
the March 2003 invasion. Despite the UN weapons inspectors having not
found any evidence of WMDs or active WMD programs after months of
searching, Clinton made clear that the United States should invade
Iraq anyway. Indeed, she asserted that even though Saddam was in full
compliance with the UN Security Council, he nevertheless needed to
resign as president, leave the country, and allow U.S. troops to
occupy the country. “The president gave Saddam Hussein one last
chance to avoid war,” Clinton said in a statement, “and
the world hopes that Saddam Hussein will finally hear this ultimatum,
understand the severity of those words, and act accordingly.”

When Saddam
refused to resign and the Bush administration launched the invasion,
Clintonwent on record calling for “unequivocal support”
for Bush’s “firm leadership and decisive action” as
“part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.” She
insisted that Iraq was somehow still “in material breach of the
relevant United Nations resolutions” and, despite the fact that
weapons inspectors had produced evidence to the contrary, claimed the
invasion was necessary to “neutralize Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction.”

“Nearly
everyone in Congress supported the invasion of Iraq, including most
Democrats.”

While all
but one congressional Democrat — Representative Barbara Lee of
California — supported the authorization of force to fight al-Qaeda
in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a sizable majority of
Democrats in Congress voted against the authorization to invade Iraq
the following year.

There were
21 Senate Democrats — along with one Republican, Lincoln Chafee,
and one independent, Jim Jeffords — who voted against the war
resolution, while 126 of 209 House Democrats also voted against it.
Bernie Sanders, then an independent House member who caucused with
the Democrats, voted with the opposition. At the time, Sanders gave a
floor speech disputing the administration’s claims about Saddam’s
arsenal. He not only cautioned that both American and Iraqi
casualties could rise unacceptably high, but also warned “about
the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in
terms of international law and the role of the United Nations.”

Hillary
Clinton, on the other hand, stood among the right-wing minority of
Democrats in Washington.

The
Democrats controlled the Senate at the time of the war authorization.
Had they closed ranks and voted in opposition, the Bush
administration would have been unable to launch the tragic invasion —
at least not legally. Instead, Clinton and other pro-war Democrats
chose to cross the aisle to side with the Republicans.

“Her
vote was simply a mistake.”

While few
Clinton supporters are still willing to argue her support for the war
was a good thing, many try to minimize its significance by referring
to it as simply a “mistake.” But while it may have been a
terrible decision, it was neither an accident nor an aberration from
Clinton’s generally hawkish worldview.

It would
have been a “mistake” if Hillary Clinton had pushed the “aye”
button when she meant to push the “nay” button. In fact, her
decision — by her own admission — was quite conscious.

The October
2002 war resolution on Iraq wasn’t like the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin
resolution authorizing military force in Vietnam, which was quickly
passed as an emergency request by President Lyndon Johnson when there
was no time for reflection and debate. By contrast, at the time of
the Iraq War authorization, there had been months of public debate on
the matter. Clinton had plenty of time to investigate the
administration’s claims that Iraq was a threat, as well as to
consider the likely consequences of a U.S. invasion.

Also unlike
the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which was disingenuously presented as
an authorization to retaliate for an alleged attack on U.S. ships,
members of Congress recognized that the Iraq resolution authorized a
full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation and a subsequent military
occupation. Clinton had met with scores of constituents, arms control
analysts, and Middle East scholars who informed her that the war was
unnecessary, illegal, and would likely end in disaster.

But she
decided to support going to war anyway. She even rejected the advice
of fellow Democratic senator Bob Graham that she read the full
National Intelligence Estimate, which would have further challenged
some of the Bush administration’s claims justifying the war.

It was not,
therefore, simply a “mistake,” or a momentary lapse of judgment.
Indeed, in her own words, she cast her vote “with conviction.”

As late as
February 2007, Clinton herself refused to admit that her vote for the
war resolution was a mistake. “If the most important thing to
any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said
his vote was a mistake,” she said while campaigning for
president, “then there are others to choose from.” She
only began to acknowledge her regrets when she saw the polling
numbers showing that a sizable majority of Democrats opposed the
decision to go to war.

“She
voted for the war because she felt it was politically necessary.”

First of
all, voting for a devastating war in order to advance one’s
political career isn’t a particularly strong rationale for why one
shouldn’t share responsibility for the consequences — especially
when that calculation proved disastrously wrong. Clinton’s vote to
authorize the invasion was the single most important factor in
convincing former supporters to back Barack Obama in the 2008
Democratic primary, thereby costing her the nomination.

Nevertheless,
it still raises questions regarding Hillary Clinton’s competence to
become president.

To have
believed that supporting the invasion would somehow be seen as a good
thing would have meant that Clinton believed that the broad consensus
of Middle East scholars who warned of a costly counterinsurgency war
were wrong — and that the Bush administration’s insistence that
U.S. occupation forces would be “treated as liberators” was
credible.

After all,
for the war to have been popular, there would have had to be few
American casualties, and the administration’s claims about WMDs and
Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda would have had to be vindicated. Moreover,
some sort of stable pro-Western democracy would have emerged in Iraq,
and the invasion would have contributed to greater stability and
democracy in the region.

If Clinton
believed any of those things were possible, she wasn’t paying
attention. Among the scores of reputable Middle East scholars with
whom I discussed the prospects of a U.S. invasion in the months
leading up to the vote, none of them believed that any of these
things would come to pass. They were right.

Nor was
pressure likely coming from Clinton’s own constituents. Only a
minority of Democrats nationwide supported the invasion, and given
that New York Democrats are more liberal than the national average,
opposition was possibly even stronger in the state she purported to
represent. Additionally, a majority of Americans polled said they
would oppose going to war if Saddam allowed for “full and complete”
weapons inspectors, which he in fact did.

Finally, the
idea that Clinton felt obliged to support the war as a woman in order
not to appear “weak” also appears groundless. Indeed, every
female senator who voted against the war authorization was easily
re-elected.

“She
thought Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and was supporting
Al-Qaeda.”

This is
excuse is problematic on a number levels.

Before the
vote, UN inspectors, independent strategic analysts, and reputable
arms control journals all challenged the Bush administration’s
claims that Iraq had somehow rebuilt its chemical and biological
weapons programs, had a nuclear weapons program, or was supporting
al-Qaeda terrorists.

Virtually
all of Iraq’s known stockpiles of chemical and biological agents
had been accounted for, and the shelf life of the small amount of
materiel that hadn’t been accounted for had long since expired.
(Some discarded canisters from the 1980s were eventually found, but
these weren’t operational.) There was no evidence that Iraq had any
delivery systems for such weapons either, or could build them without
being detected. In addition, a strict embargo against imports of any
additional materials needed for the manufacture of WMDs — which had
been in effect since 1990 — made any claims that Iraq had offensive
capability transparently false to anyone who cared to investigate the
matter at that time.

Most of the
alleged intelligence data made available to Congress prior to the war
authorization vote has since been declassified. Most strategic
analysts have found it transparently weak, based primarily on hearsay
by Iraqi exiles of dubious credibility and conjecture by
ideologically driven Bush administration officials.

Similarly, a
detailed 1998 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency
indicated that Iraq’s nuclear program appeared to have been
completely dismantled by the mid-1990s, and a 2002 U.S. National
Intelligence Estimate made no mention of any reconstituted nuclear
development effort. So it’s doubtful Clinton actually had reason to
believe her own claims that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.

Additionally,
there was no credible evidence whatsoever that the secular Baathist
Iraqi regime had any ties to the hardline Islamist group al-Qaeda,
yet Clinton distinguished herself as the only Senate Democrat to make
such a claim. Indeed, a definitive report by the Department of
Defense noted that not only did no such link exist, but that none
could have even been reasonably suggested based on the evidence
available at that time.

Moreover,
even if Iraq really did have “weapons of mass destruction,” the
war would have still been illegal, unnecessary, and catastrophic.

Roughly 30
countries (including the United States) have chemical, biological, or
nuclear programs with weapons potential. The mere possession of these
programs is not legitimate grounds for invasion, unless one is
authorized by the United Nations Security Council — which the
invasion of Iraq, pointedly, was not. If Clinton really thought
Iraq’s alleged possession of those weapons justified her support
for invading the country, then she was effectively saying the United
States somehow has the right to invade dozens of other countries as
well.

Similarly,
even if Iraq had been one of those 30 countries — and remember, it
was not — the threat of massive retaliation by Iraq’s neighbors
and U.S. forces permanently stationed in the region provided a more
than sufficient deterrent to Iraq using the weapons beyond its
borders. A costly invasion and extended occupation were completely
unnecessary.

Finally, the
subsequent war and the rise of sectarianism, terrorism, Islamist
extremism, and the other negative consequences of the invasion would
have been just as bad even if the rationale weren’t bogus. American
casualties could have actually been much higher, since WMDs would
have likely been used against invading U.S. forces.

But here’s
the kicker: Clinton stood by the war even after these claims were
definitively debunked.

Even many
months after the Bush administration itself acknowledged that Iraq
had neither WMDs nor ties to Al-Qaeda, Clinton declared in a speech
at George Washington University that her support for the
authorization was still “the right vote” and one that “I
stand by.” Similarly, in an interview on Larry King Live in
April 2004, when asked about her vote despite the absence of WMDs or
al-Qaeda ties, she acknowledged, “I don’t regret giving the
president authority.”

No
Excuses

The 2016
Democratic presidential campaign is coming down to a race between
Hillary Clinton, who supported the Bush Doctrine and its call for
invading countries that are no threat to us regardless of the
consequences, and Bernie Sanders, who supported the broad consensus
of Middle East scholars and others familiar with the region who
recognized that such an invasion would be disastrous.

There’s no
question that the United States is long overdue to elect a woman head
of state. But electing Hillary Clinton — or anyone else who
supported the invasion of Iraq — would be sending a dangerous
message that reckless global militarism needn’t prevent someone
from becoming president, even as the nominee of the more liberal of
the two major parties.

It also
raises this ominous scenario: If Clinton were elected president
despite having voted to give President Bush the authority, based on
false pretenses, to launch a war of aggression — in violation of
the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, and common sense — what
would stop her from demanding that Congress give her the same
authority?

Unmarked on
any official map, Dadaab—in eastern Kenya—is still today home to
roughly 500,000 refugees, mostly from Somalia. You can follow it on
Dadaabcamps.com. Dadaab was formed in 1992 to hold what was
anticipated to be 90,000 refugees from Somalia’s civil war. When
the war did not end and famine in the Horn of Africa exacerbated
conditions, it grew to half a million refugees, though some estimates
add a couple hundred thousand more. Its residents are forbidden from
leaving, from building permanent homes, and from working. Entire
families have grown up in the camp, initially fleeing al-Shabaab
fundamentalism in Somalia. The United States and other Western
governments have supported the camp, the UN managed it, and the
Kenyan forces policed it—all this until the Kenyan government
officially closed it, in 2014.

The
existence of Dadaab (composed, actually, of several camps) has always
been complicated. Kenya didn’t want the Somalis, who considered the
area, historically, their own land. The camp’s explosive growth,
especially during the drought of 2011, was not anticipated. UN
resources for refugees are always stretched thin. As BenRawlence says
in City of Thorns, his scathing indictment of the authorities, “Early
warning [of the famine] was a waste of time—there would have to be
people dying on television before the money from rich governments
would flow. And when it finally did, it would come in a flood. And
the markets for the local farmers would collapse entirely. The same
thing happened every time.” Ten thousand children had been
dying each month, trying to walk to Kenya. “The mortality rate
was seven times over the emergency threshold.” Eventually,
260,000 people would die, half of them children. The site became a
circus, with TV journalists everywhere and the profiteers of misery,
who are always waiting for tragedy in order to pounce.

The rains
eventually came and things were somewhat better, though too much rain
can make matters worse. Then, because of infiltration by al-Shabaab,
two Spanish women, aid workers, were kidnapped. The international
agencies suspended their work and Kenya declared war on al-Shabaab,
with the intent of forming a buffer zone known as Jubaland between
the two countries (but within Somalia borders). That war was largely
ineffective. The residents of the Dadaab camps experienced increased
violence. The Kenyan government (“less a state than a corrupt
collection of rival cartels, some of whom probably had an interest in
prolonging the fighting”) and the Kenyan police, an “assortment
of drunk and overweight…officers staring at the television,”
were largely motivated by corruption and profit.

And the
refugees themselves? Rawlence describes them as mostly trapped in
Dadaab. Some waited for years for papers for immigration to the few
countries that would accept them. Some fled to Nairobi in spite of
the restrictions on them. Some returned to Mogadishu, believing that
it might be safer than continuing to live in the camps. There was
social breakdown, a blurring of traditional gender roles, especially
for men, who had a difficult time being providers. People gave up as
their lives dried up. Then, to make things even worse, external
events changed all of the parameters. The UNHCR had to cut food
rations for the refugees in Dadaab, because the money was needed
elsewhere, especially for Syria and Iraq. September 21, 2013, masked
gunmen attacked shoppers at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, amidst
shouts of “Allahu Akbar” and “We are al-Shabaab,” killing at
least 67 people over several days. The ineptitude of the Kenyan
forces was on full display and video caught their looting of the
mall. But that hardly mattered. The outcry was, once again, for
closing down Dadaab, described as an al-Shabaab breeding ground.
Rawlence does not agree with that assessment.

Following
the rulebook of other countries in recent decades, the Kenyan
government simply declared “Dadaab Camp Officially Closed.” No
matter that there were still 400,000 people living there and
conditions in Somalia had not significantly improved. The refugees
(including Somalis in Nairobi) were expected to return to Somalia,
and some did, sent on Kenyan busses. Rawlence describes the situation
as “the pogrom against Somalis.” Nor does he mince words
when he states that Dadaab had “the structure of punishment”
like a prison, though the residents had committed no crimes. The
crime was somewhere else: “There was a crime here on an
industrial scale: confining people to a camp, forbidding them to
work, and then starving them; people who had come to Dadaab fleeing
famine in the first place.” With nowhere else for people to go,
Dadaab actually grew larger, instead of smaller.

City of
Thorns is a perfect metaphor for our time, a perfect storm of human
misery because of mismanagement. It doesn’t take much imagination
to realize that other similar refugee camps are springing up all over
the Middle East. The wonder of Rawlence’s book is its emphasis on
the human dimension, in spite of the writer’s massing of historical
evidence. (Rawlence worked for Human Rights Watch in the area for
several years.) The book’s sub-title is Nine Lives in the World’s
Largest Refugee Camp, although, sadly, since the book was completed,
there are several camps in the Middle East competing in their size.

The lives of
nine refugees fleshes out the horror of the story by providing it
with a human context. Thus, one of the first people we encounter is
Guled, who was born in Mogadishu in 1993, and, years later, fled the
country, arriving in Dadaab late in 2010. Before that, he’d been
conscripted by the fundamentalists, forced to join the moral police
(boy soldiers), checking the market. He describes some of their
tactics. “Beating was routine. If you had music or inappropriate
pictures on your phone you might be forced to swallow the SIM card.
Smokers often had their faces burned with their own cigarettes. One
man who had been beaten for smoking…later broke down crying when he
recounted the story—not for the physical pain he had suffered but
the heartbreak of being assaulted by children.”

After some
weeks of policing the market, Guled managed to escape and flee to
Kenya, soon after marrying a girl named Maryam. In Dabaab, he had to
register with the UNHCR and claim asylum “in order to be given a
ration card, personal items like a blanket and a bucket….”
Guled remained frightened that al-Shabaab’s infiltrators would
recognize him. He had to struggle to find a job but eventually found
day work as a porter. Since he was single, he’d not been given a
plot of land and a tent but had to share space with a family. After
some months, Maryam arrived, pregnant, and the two were united. Their
lives and that of their two children were tenuous. Guled’s jobs are
never adequate for supporting his family; he’s also addicted to
“playing and watching football.” Eventually, Maryam gives
up on their marriage and returns to Mogadishu with their children.
Guled remains in Dabaab for fear that al-Shabaab will recognize him.

Another
marriage—between Monday, who was born in the camp, and Muna, who
was brought to the camp by her parents—falters because Muna became
addicted to khat. Her addiction occurred after the birth of two
children and after the family was put on “fast track” for
resettlement in Australia. Fast track is an oxymoron; the time often
stretches into years. Muna became so compromised by the khat that she
tried to kill herself. Monday was left for a time raising their
children. Rawlence’s inclusion of their story is obvious. As he
notes, “Muna was perhaps the ultimate child of her generation.
Raised in the limbo of the camp, the true daughter of Dabaab, Muna
had relinquished responsibility for herself entirely to the testing
mercy of events,” simply giving up. Yet, months and months
later, after the two were reunited and Muna was pregnant again, their
paperwork (which had been lost) finally resulted in their
resettlement in Australia. Whether they would remain intact as a
family—after so many years of disappointment—was doubtful.

In City of
Thorns, Rawlence is anything but hopeful about the lives of the
refugees he followed over several years. The book suffers from poor
editing in a number of places, possibly because of an attempt to get
it into print just as the refugee situation in other trouble spots of
the world has gotten out of control. Still, Rawlence’s rage at the
lackadaisical approach of donor nations (often the cause of the
problems) about refugee crises is totally understandable and
justified. As he concludes, “Ranged against the Kenyan desire to
see Dadaab leveled was not just the law, but all the forces of human
ingenuity and determination that had raised a city in this most
hostile desert. Dadaab worked. It served a need, for the miracle of
schools and hospitals and a safety net of food, and for respite from
the exhaustion of the war. It had become a fact. Through the
accumulated energy of the generations that had lived there it had
acquired the weight and drama of place. It was a landmark around
which hundreds of thousands oriented their lives. In the imagination
of Somalis, even if not on the official cartography, Dadaab was now
on the map.”